Bar design team working on Nitrogen Lab ice-cream shop

Andrew Haythornthwaite and Shai Akram, the designers behind London bars The Book Club and the Queen of Hoxton, are working on the identity and interiors for new ice-cream bar The Nitrogen Lab.

By May 20, 201012:00 amJanuary 29, 20154:56 pm

The bar, which will open in Camden in June, has been founded by husband-and-wife experimental confectionery company The Chin Chin Laboratorists.

The bar will showcase bespoke ice cream made in front of customers at individual workstations, where base custards will be mixed with other ingredients and frozen in liquid nitrogen-filled mixers (sketch, by Haythornthwaite, pictured right). The Chin Chin Laboratorists founder Nyisha Weber-Akbari-Kalhur says, ’It’s sweet gratification and a theatrical experience.’

The Chin Chin Laboratorists appointed Haythornthwaite and Akram in April, after the company was impressed by the pair’s work on The Book Club.

Fellow founder Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur says, ’A lot of crucial safety equipment, such as oxygen monitors and safety barriers, had to be built into the design to make sure we didn’t give the customers frostbite.’

The interiors (concept pictured below) have been inspired by an industrial laboratory and will use workbench clamps and galvanised tube scaffolding to suspend all the equipment and furniture in one continuous unit. Akram says, ’It feels like a complex three-dimensional diagram made of coloured blocks and line.’

Akram and Haythornthwaite are working on a scientific-inspired logo that links the company’s initials ’CCL’ in a molecular diagram structure. Haythornthwaite says, ’The menus will be a bit like prescriptions so it’s like a pharmaceutical logo, only softer.’

Although the ice-cream bar will be a one-off destination at present, The Chin Chin Laboratorists has plans to collaborate with designers to create edible food installations and demonstrations in other spaces.